Mary C. Henderson, Author and Scholar of Theater History, Dies at 83

Mary C. Henderson, a scholar of the theater whose interests as a historian and curator spanned centuries and as a Tony nominator and critic were up to the minute, died on Jan. 3 at her home in Congers, N.Y. She was 83.

The cause was Parkinson’s disease, her son Doug said.

Ms. Henderson, who taught theater history at New York University and other schools, wrote several books, often lavishly illustrated, reflecting her familiarity with and love of theater imagery and theater artifacts. They included “The City and the Theater” (1973, revised in 2004), a history of the city’s playhouses dating to the 18th century; “Broadway Ballyhoo” (1989), a study of theater advertising; and “Mielziner: Master of Modern Stage Design” (2000), an analytical biography of the prolific and influential designer Jo Mielziner, whose more than 200 shows included the original Broadway productions of “Carousel,” “Death of a Salesman,” “A Streetcar Name Desire,” “Guys and Dolls” and “Gypsy.”

Ms. Henderson’s most important work, “Theater in America: 250 Years of Plays, Players and Productions” (1986, revised in 1996), is a concise history, valued by students and teachers, that tells the country’s theatrical tale in chapters that focus on individuals and individual professions: producers, playwrights, actors and others.

Ms. Henderson “has the curiosity of a bibliophile as well as the enthusiasm of one who loves the stage,” the New York Times critic Mel Gussow wrote in his review of the book.

From 1978 until 1985 Ms. Henderson was the curator of the theater collection of the Museum of the City of New York. She was also a founder and the director of the Theater Museum, an offshoot of the city museum, featuring playbills, posters, costumes and other objects, that operated in the early 1980s in the Manhattan theater district.

Mary Carmen Malanga was born on July 16, 1928, in Newark and grew up in Elizabeth, N.J. Her father, Thomas, left the family during the Depression, and Mary, the youngest of five children, was reared by her mother, Divina Gianattasio. She graduated from Douglass College of Rutgers University, and earned an M.A. in speech and theater from the University of Pittsburgh and a Ph.D. in theater history, dramatic criticism and literature from New York University.

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Mary C. Henderson

Her 1953 marriage to Robert M. Henderson, later chief of the library and museum of the performing arts at Lincoln Center and the author of a biography of D. W. Griffith, ended in divorce.

In addition to her son Doug, she is survived by two other sons, James and Stuart; two sisters, Christine Wilson and Evelyn Zamula; and four grandchildren.

Unlike some historians, Ms. Henderson did not live her professional life entirely in the past. For 12 years, from 1980 to 1992, she served on the Tony nominating committee, seeing every show to open on Broadway and helping decide which actors, directors and designers deserved to be included in the annual vote for Broadway’s highest honor. She also wrote for a variety of publications, including The New York Times.

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One Times article, in 1987, about the history of the dinner table in American drama, created a small tempest. In it she noted the curious fact that though the dinner table has often been center stage in dramatic works, it is almost never seen in musicals, and she went on to declare that the dinner table was a tired theatrical trope and that it was time for American dramatists to retire it as a setting for conversation and conflict.

“The world is too large a place, too teeming with the stuff of drama, and the table too small a human zone for playwrights to continue to rely on such a restrictive dramatic device,” she wrote. She named Neil Simon as an especially egregious overuser of tables.

Mr. Simon responded with a witheringly arch letter to the editor, claiming that as hard as he tried to set dinner scenes in his plays over a laundry hamper or in a 1939 Ford, mercenary directors and producers insisted that his characters sit and eat at a table.

“Please, Ms. Henderson,” he wrote, “I urge you to see my new play when completed, ‘Dinner at Eight in the Holland Tunnel.’ It will actually be staged in the Holland Tunnel. If it’s a hit, the tunnel should be closed for three or four years. Good for the theater, tough on the people who live in New Jersey.”

A version of this article appears in print on January 23, 2012, on Page B8 of the New York edition with the headline: Mary C. Henderson, 83, Author And Scholar of Theater History. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe